Birthday week!

Bonjour tout le monde! Comment ça va? How is everyone doing? This week has flown by and I'm doing great here! We are staying really busy and seeing progress from our amis. 

Last Wednesday we did a lot of finding and ran into a lot of nice people. We were supposed to have a lesson with one of our newer amis but when we got there he was on the phone with his girlfriend and basically told us he was just being nice before and isn't interested at all in religion. We had seen it coming because he was always busy or not home. We had to drop him which is always not fun but we have others we need to spend our time with. It also rained really hard all day but there were two bright rainbows that night right before sunset! 

Thursday we had an amazing lesson with Luke! We talked about the Book of Mormon that he has already been reading everyday. We showed him how it works, who is writing what, and stuff like that. We also testified about Joseph Smith and how we have received the Book. The spirit was so strong and we are going to be setting up a date for baptism here hopefully this next week. I will let y'all know more about that next week. We had a dinner appointment with a members family that night. They are awesome. Frere Aroujo is from Brazil and so is his wife. He is here for work and speaks less french than I do. Their whole family speaks perfect English though so that was a nice little break. We also passed by someone who was contacted like a year ago but never followed up on. He let us right in and we just started talking. He is really cool and super nice. His mother came in about 10 minutes later and started talking to us too. She says she is Catholic but doesn't practice much. Like most of the people here, but she doesn't practice because her beliefs are closer to ours than to the Catholics. They were both pretty interested so we will visit them again later this week. 

Friday was my Birthday! Elder Holt made German pancakes for breakfast which were okay but they aren't my favorite aha. It was also the day after the new missionaries arrived. The sister that stayed here in Drummondville with us is now training so they picked up packages and stuff while they were in Montreal. They brought it to District council and I got all of it on my Birthday. That was when Elder Holt remembered that it was my Birthday ahaha. He had forgotten which day and thought it was the next. Thank you to everyone who has sent something! I love all of it! That night we were pretty busy. We had passed by and had lessons with 5 of our amis. We almost didn't have time for dinner but we hurried and stopped at MacDonald's in between some of the lessons to eat dinner. The Poutine there isn't too bad! Not as great as others but still good. 

Saturday we had a lesson with an ami named Wakilongo. We have been trying forever to get in contact with him but is never there for lessons. This time wasn't any different. He wasn't home again so we asked his wife what was going on and she said that he is just busy. We decided just to drop him too. We might try again toward the end of the transfer. That gave us some time to go finding and we ran into this couple from New Zealand! Super cool people with a weird story. They were kicked out of NZ because they claim to have seen an angel in they sky and tried to tell the government and they didn't like it so they got sent out. They are not interested in joining a church but it was a interesting Contact. We finished the night by visiting Kathy. She has decreased her smoking from 25 cigarettes a day to only 5 or less. She is also reading everyday and doing great! 

Sunday was pretty nice. We had 4 of our amis at church! Not much else happened until later that night. We spent some time street contacting people and we met this really nice lady and her Friend. Judy and Ray. She has had some bad experiences with churches and wasn't super interested at first. They just really liked to talk. She did have some questions about the plan of salvation because her son had died without being baptized and her father recently passed away but was super religious. I quickly testified of the spirit world and life after death. She started crying and said she had been thinking about that for 8 years since her son died and never had an answer until then. She invited us to meet with her son but it was late so we got her contact info and her sons and then had to leave. We have a meeting with them hopefully this Wednesday. 

Yesterday was a beautiful day! Bright blue skies and about 14 degrees all day long. We had a lesson with Marc and we talked about General Conference that is coming up! It was a good lesson and he is super funny. We then did some service. From what the member told us, it sounded like it would take an hour and a half. When we got there, we just moved a little shed and freezer and few other little things. It only took us 30 minutes and she was so happy she went and bought us two big pizzas for dinner. I wasn't complaining. One of the people that worked at the pizza place, however, was someone that we had run into before so we talked to him for a little and found out he was the boyfriend to the daughter of Line. She is one of our amis. We will hopefully have an appointment with him this week too! We have found a lot of new potential amis! 

We have been staying busy here finding new people and teaching the ones who we already know. They are all making good progress and loving the Gospel. I know that as we put in the time and faith, Our loving Heavenly Father will bless us with the things we are looking for or the things we need at this time. General Conference is also coming up so I'm going to extend the same Invitation that I have received from President Phillips. Go to this general conference with some questions you have right now for your life and you will receive and answer to them! Listen to conference and Have a wonderful week!

Love You! Elder Beckstrand

My last district

Me, Elder Holt, Soeur Cameron, Garcia, Lopez, and Broadbent